1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to hierarchical file systems and, more specifically, to a system and method for file management which can be used as a website development tool.
2. Description of the Background Art
The Internet is playing a large role in commerce, and most companies tend to have a website. Many websites need to be frequently modified, and they are usually modified in an ad hoc process by scores of contributors. Consequently, the on-going process of keeping website content up to date, accurate, and well-integrated is often a greater challenge than the initial planning and development phase. Internet sites may be updated by the day, hour, or minute, by teams numbering in the hundreds. Similarly, intranet content contributors constantly submit new content or make changes to existing content, and, unless new content is quickly integrated, the intranet""s usefulness as a fundamental communications resources is limited.
Large websites face many problems as the number of web contributors increase exponentially. The volume and content of these sites is increasing rapidly, and sites must be updated more frequently as site traffic and Internet commerce grows. With the increasing number of contributors, volume, and complexity of content, it has becomes increasingly more difficult for the manager of the website (xe2x80x9cthe webmasterxe2x80x9d) to oversee every change and perform quality control.
Because of the complexity of website development, there is a need for a central system to manage and control website development. Known systems for managing and controlling website development include software configuration management systems, document management systems, and database publishing systems.
There are several disadvantages associated with such known website development systems. For instance, because maintaining a website often requires the efforts of tens or hundreds of people, it is desirable to have website contributors work in parallel. Software configuration management systems do not allow contributors to simultaneously make changes to the same area of a website. Moreover, none of the known systems allow contributors working in parallel to separately test their own work without actually making a change to the website. Thus, conflicting changes may be posted to a website causing the website to be corrupted.
Since contributors cannot foresee on an individual level the effects of their work when combined with other""s contributions, known systems rely on a webmaster to integrate all changes posted to a website and check the changes for errors. A webmaster also ensures that contributors only change content they are authorized to change. However, the webmaster often becomes a bottleneck for the website development process because the webmaster must do all the integration and testing of changes to a website. Integrating the work of multiple users is manual and time consuming, and a great deal of time is wasted on bug fixing and resolving conflicts, while too little time is invested in design, innovation, and strategy. Moreover, a webmaster cannot easily oversee a contributors progress on a change until the contributor is ready to submit the change to the webmaster. Thus, the webmaster cannot correct errors early on and cannot determine how contributors are progressing.
Another disadvantage of known website development systems is that they do not track file version histories. Since website files are continually added, removed, changed, moved, and renamed, it is useful to know who made what version of a file and when the version was made. With full access to prior versions, users can easily find the changes that caused a bug, revert to previous versions, and identify new bugs. Additionally, known website developments systems do not allow immediate access to any previous version of a site subsection or the entire site. The ability to immediately roll back to any previous version of a website can be. a vital disaster recovery tool in the event of site corruption or the distribution of inappropriate or inaccurate information.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a web development system that allows contributors to determine how their changes fit into the entire website without actually posting the changes to the website. Additionally, it is desirable to have a web development system that allows contributors to access an earlier version of a file, website subsection, or website and that allows a webmaster to check on the progress of contributors, as well as more easily post changes to a website.
The present invention provides a system and method for file management. One use of such a system is as a website development tool.
The system of the present invention is comprised of hierarchical file systems, which are referred to herein as xe2x80x9careas.xe2x80x9d There are three types of areas: work areas, staging areas, and edition areas. A work area is a modifiable file system, and, in a work area a user can create, edit, delete, add, and modify files and directories. In one embodiment, a work area is a virtual copy of an existing website and a user""s personal view of the website.
A staging area is a read-only file system that supports select versioning operations. Various users of work areas can integrate their work by submitting the contents of their work areas to the staging area. In the staging area, developers can compare their work and see how their changes fit together.
An edition area is a read-only file system. Contents of a staging area are virtually copied into an edition area to create a frozen, read-only snapshot of the contents of the staging area. In one embodiment the contents of an edition area represent the contents of an edition of a website.
In one embodiment, areas share directory trees so that directories and files do not have to be physically copied each time an area is created. This allows areas to be created quickly and provides for efficient use of system resources. Associated with each file and directory is a history object that stores information on the contents of that file or directory in each area in which that file or directory exists.
In another embodiment, the present invention tracks the history of the contents of each file and directory. This allows the system to easily compare one file with another file or one directory with another directory and identify whether they are identical or related.
In yet another embodiment, the system of the present invention includes an HTTP protocol virtualization module which enables one web server to operate as if it were multiple web servers. This allows each area to be a complete website at the HTTP protocol level without having a separate web server for each area.